John Zerunge Young AM (Chinese :楊子榮 born 1956) is a Hong Kong-born Australian artist.
Born in Hong Kong in 1956, John Zerunge Young moved to Australia as a child in 1967 during China's Cultural Revolution. [1]
Young first studied Russian Impressionism at the Julian Ashton Art School, then, after declining a scholarship to study painting at the National Art School in Sydney, studied Philosophy of Science and Aesthetics at the University of Sydney, earning a First Class Honours degree for his thesis on Wittgenstein and Aesthetics. He then studied sculpture and painting at Sydney College of the Arts [2] with postmodernist artist Imants Tillers [3] and avant-garde composer and musician David Ahern. [2]
In the early 1980s he moved to Europe, living in London and Paris (at the Cité internationale des arts [4] ) for a couple of years after being awarded the Power Foundation Scholarship from Sydney University. Upon his return to Australia, Young lectured at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney from 1983 to 1994. [2]
Young's first solo exhibition was a one-minute show held in a hamlet in the fishing village of Rosroe, Connemara, on the west coast of Ireland, in 1982.[ citation needed ] Three series of painting followed: the Silhouette Paintings, the Polychrome Paintings and the Double Ground Paintings. [2]
He played an important role as a founding member in 1996 of the Asian Australian Artists' Association (Gallery 4A), now the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, a gallery and centre for the advocacy of Asian Australian and Asian contemporary art. [2]
He moved to Melbourne in 1997. [2]
In 2009, Young re-joined the board of the 4A Centre, [2] but as of 2021 is no longer a member of the board. [5]
Young has produced series of abstract paintings which deal with concerns around technology and the body: Naïve and Sentimental Paintings,The Day After Tomorrow and Spectrumfigures. After 2008, his projects started focusing on transcultural humanitarianism, including Bonhoeffer in Harlem (Berlin, 2009), Safety Zone (Melbourne, 2010; Brisbane, 2011).[ citation needed ]
Young was awarded the Australia Council for the Arts' Visual Arts Craft Board (VACB) Artist’s Residency in 1998, to travel to Tokyo, and its Visual Arts Fellowship for established artists in 2012, undertaking a project on the history of the Chinese diaspora in Australia. [2]
In the 2020 Australia Day Honours Young was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his "significant service to the visual arts, and as a role model". [6]
Young resides in Melbourne with his partner and two children as of 2021 [update] . [3]
Young has been the subject of three survey exhibitions: Orient/Occident: John Young, 1978-2005 held at the TarraWarra Museum of Art, [7] Victoria, in 2005-2006; The Bridge and the Fruit Tree at ANU's Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra in 2013; and The Lives of Celestials: John Young Zerunge at Town Hall Gallery, [8] Boroondara, Melbourne in 2019.
Young has been commissioned for numerous significant national and international public projects, including:[ citation needed ]
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